Just Call Me Superhero

by Alina Bronsky

  I had no idea how much time had elapsed. The door had opened and closed a few times. Tammy kissed my father a few more times and the smacks filled the room.

  “Ferdi, do you want to as well?” she asked.

  He nodded and I lifted him up. He touched the dead cheek with his lips. I put him back down. Christ, I thought, he’s only six.

  “And now you.” Tammy poked me in the back.

  “I don’t want to,” I said. I had long since crossed the line of what was possible for me. I wasn’t planning to stray any further beyond it.

  “You have to.”

  “I do not have to do anything.”

  “You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise.” Tammy’s hand was still resting between my shoulder blades. I could feel its heat through my T-shirt. The room was cold.

  To get her to stop, I bent down over the coffin. I wasn’t planning to kiss my father. I was afraid to. But the tip of my nose touched his and didn’t fall off, so I moved a little higher and felt his marble forehead beneath my lips. I couldn’t remember the last kiss he had given me.

  I straightened back up with my eyes closed. It was burning beneath my eyelids.

  Tammy handed me the sunglasses, which had fallen into the coffin when I leaned down. She took my hand and with her other hand held Ferdi’s. We stood for a moment in the doorway and all turned around together. My father lay in a coffin, next to him burned a meter-high white candle, and I thought that it was now time to leave him behind forever. Ferdi craned his neck to look at him even after we had passed through the door and were back in the sun. He kept turning around until the door closed. The funeral director was waiting next to a stone angel with his hands crossed and considerately avoided looking us in the eyes.

  We took our leave and left. It was very warm, the sun shone down from above, through the crack between my glasses and my forehead and onto my eyelids; my feet bounced along the asphalt, and I realized to my surprise that Tammy had been right. I felt a lightness of heart that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Claudia said I didn’t need a black suit. Tammy claimed the opposite.

  “You’d look so sweet,” she said, ignoring Claudia’s scolding look. “How often does your father die?”

  “He is still a boy.” Claudia sounded like a worn-out general who just wanted to win one last battle before collapsing. “He doesn’t need some silly suit. He can wear black jeans.”

  “He’s a man.” Tammy tussled my hair. “Ferdi is a man, too. He’s also getting a suit.”

  Claudia sighed. Now she was acting the way you expect an ex-wife to act around her successor. She was annoyed. She rolled her eyes. I figured she was out of energy. That she hadn’t been like this up to now was an act of self-restraint for which she wasn’t getting as much credit as she deserved.

  “It’ll be over soon,” she said and leaned back with her eyes closed after Tammy rushed out to the garage and started furiously sorting some garbage bags or other as if there was nothing more important in the world to do. “Things will be better after the funeral.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It always is.”

  “It’s no problem for me to wear a suit. I don’t have any black jeans.”

  We went shopping, Claudia and I, the two of us, as if I were Ferdi’s age. There weren’t a lot of options. The shop at the southern end of the market square sold only plus sizes, the one on the northern side everything from toothpicks to underpants, but no trousers. In the last possibility, a boutique catering to Eastern Europeans, I tried on a suit. “We could drive to Frankfurt,” Claudia had suggested, but I just waved the idea aside.

  “Claudia,” I said quietly when I came out of the changing room. She was waiting with her eyes closed, sitting on a stool and leaning against the wall. I said her name again but she didn’t react. At first I thought she’d had a stroke but she had just fallen asleep.

  I exhaled and ran my hand across my face. Claudia opened her eyes and smiled.

  “You look good,” she said.

  “Thanks. Fits well, too.”

  “No, really, everything together looks great. Look at yourself.” She pointed to a tall mirror and looked me in the eyes.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  Her face winced as if I had stepped with my full weight on her foot.

  “Sorry, Claudia, but I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I never want to see myself again. Do you understand—never. You shouldn’t bother asking. I’m fine with it. I’m living a fulfilled life, I’m burying my father, buying myself a suit, I even keep finding girls who are willing to try to be with me despite my face. I am a fundamentally happy person, so now please stop trying to remind me of my glorious past. It’s over. It bothers you more than me.”

  She nodded and looked down at her hands.

  I went back into the changing room and pulled my phone out of the pocket of my pants. I looked at it hundreds of times per day. Janne hadn’t called. By now I knew she wasn’t going to, but I was waiting for it all the same.

  My mama is coming,” said Tammy when we got back to the house, me with my shopping bag in my hand and Claudia with a fan she’d bought at the ninety-nine cent shop on the market square. She was fanning herself and breathing hard even though it wasn’t very hot. I was worried about her blood pressure.

  “She’s coming to the funeral.” Tammy kept talking even when neither Claudia nor I paid her announcement sufficient attention. “She’s arriving tonight.”

  “Good that you told us,” said Claudia flatly. “Is she coming on her own?”

  “What do you think? The flights are expensive, you know.”

  “That’s very nice of her to come,” I said cautiously.

  Tammy looked at me as if I had said something incredibly moronic.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s her son-in-law, you know.”

  “Had she ever met him?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t get bent out of shape,” said Claudia. “Of course Tammy is paying for the plane ticket, but it doesn’t affect your inheritance.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s got nothing to do with that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I couldn’t explain it. Somehow, in a highly roundabout way, everything had to do to Janne in the end. But I wouldn’t have said that even under threat of execution.

  “I don’t need any more people gaping at me,” I said.

  Claudia shrugged. “Funerals, birthdays, and weddings have been public events since the dawn of time. There’s no point in fighting it. Get yourself together.”

  I had no idea she could be so harsh.

  My father’s Ukrainian mother-in-law was supposed to land just after midnight.

  “You have a driver’s license?” I asked Tamara incredulously when she started looking for the car keys while continuously checking the flight information on her phone. Then I recalled that a week ago Tamara had probably been totally capable of dealing with life. It was unlikely that my father had led her around by the hand and taken care of everything for her. Even if she was his beloved little girl with the big breasts. Somebody still had to defend the murderers and rapists and earn the money for new garden sculptures.

  “Unlike you,” she said haughtily. “Will you get your license when you turn seventeen?”

  “Go to the airport with her, Marek,” ordered Claudia in a voice that permitted no objections.

  “And what if I say no?”

  “Just do it, Marek,” said Tammy. “If I drive into a tree Claudia will be rid of us both.”

  I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Why the atmosphere had taken such a nosedive and we were no longer a happy grieving family like we had been when I arrived. Why Tammy and Claudia suddenly had to attack each other. An hour earlier they’d been at each othe
r’s throats about the funeral arrangements. Tammy rejected Claudia’s classical music playlist on the grounds that it was old men’s music. She waved two strange-looking CDs and had another one tucked under her arm.

  “He was an old man!” said Claudia, using every ounce of her strength to control herself. “He was an old man, and there will be a lot of other old men at his funeral. Colleagues, clients, the mayor for god’s sake.”

  “So? It’s not their funeral.”

  Claudia groaned.

  In the end she won out on the music front. But that meant Tamara got her way with the reception.

  “We’re going to invite everyone here.” She spread her arms out as if she was trying to hug the whole house. “There’s plenty of room here.” And this is my fiefdom and I am in charge here, that’s what it said across her nearly flawless forehead, blemished only by a barely visible worry-crease.

  “And the coffee cake? And the coffee?” Claudia looked away as if it was more than she could handle to have to look Tammy in the eye. “Who will you put in charge of that?”

  “Nobody,” said Tammy. “I’ll make it all myself. With Mama.”

  “For two hundred people?”

  “For a thousand for all I care.”

  “Why are you guys fighting so much?” I asked in the car. I noticed that Tammy had painted her nails black today. She drove like a crazy person and I double-checked several times to make sure I had my seat belt on. I still had my whole life ahead of me. “I mean, up to now it’s been all peace and love and pancakes between you. You were so nice to each other.”

  “What?” She hadn’t been listening to me.

  “Don’t give my mother such a hard time, Tammy, she’s at the end of her rope,” I said a bit louder.

  She bit her lip.

  “I know that things aren’t so easy for you either,” I said diplomatically.

  She turned her face toward the window. Given that she was going 120 miles per hour it was a bit worrisome.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, I don’t want have an accident.”

  “It’s not like you could get much worse,” she said.

  “Go ahead and speak your mind, I don’t care.”

  She turned her face back toward me. There were tears in her eyes and I couldn’t understand what the source of the tears could be. Her mother was arriving, was that a reason to cry?

  “I’m sorry,” I said even though she was really the one who should have been saying that. “Why hasn’t your mother ever been here?”

  Tamara didn’t say anything.

  “Not even for the wedding?”

  “It was a small wedding,” she mumbled.

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  I sighed. This conversation was nothing but a minefield. For the first time it dawned on me that Tammy’s faraway relatives might not have been as happy as I’d always assumed about her sudden pregnancy by the father of her host family. My father and Tammy had married immediately so she wouldn’t have to go back the Ukraine. Maybe my father wasn’t so thrilled about the whole thing either. Maybe he hadn’t fallen madly in love, maybe he was just doing what he saw as his duty. Maybe everything had been totally different than I had always pictured.

  “I went to see my family in the Ukraine twice with Ferdi,” said Tammy.

  “Does your mother know, by the way?”

  “Know what? That he’s dead? Of course, that’s why she’s coming.”

  “Know this.” I drew a circle around my face with my hands.

  “Oh,” said Tammy. “Don’t worry about it. The world doesn’t revolve around your pimples. She’s definitely seen worse.”

  We waited in front of the arrivals board at Frankfurt airport. My head hurt from leaning back the whole time. Tammy had snuggled up to me and laid her head on my shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Out of respect and whatnot.”

  “Respect for who?” She kissed me on the cheek and then again on the neck.

  “You’re a widow, Tammy.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So stop kissing me.”

  “You’re like a brother to me.” She kissed me on the ear, and it sounded loud. “Like a cousin,” she corrected. “Without you I’d have completely lost it by now.”

  She was talking like she was drunk. It even seemed as if she couldn’t stand up straight. I was propping her up. Her waist was very thin, I could get one arm all the way around it. For a second I noticed that she smelled like peonies behind her ears. Then she shoved me away with both hands and tried to steady herself on her own. She stepped on my foot with her heel but I didn’t make a sound.

  “Mama,” she cried shrilly and stumbled off.

  I had expected Tammy’s mother to be like her, long legs, long hair, just twice her age. Or, perhaps less likely, a little round woman with a long coat and a headscarf like I’d seen a long time ago in an article on Kiev in National Geographic. The last thing I had expected was that Tammy’s mother would look like a copy of Claudia, tall, disheveled hair that wasn’t blonde but red—Claudia had dyed hers the same shade a few years back. Tammy’s mother was wearing flashy glasses and had a large mouth. And she spoke English better than me.

  “My mother is a professor, you idiot,” hissed Tammy in my ear as I pulled her suspiciously heavy suitcase along. I’d tried to compliment the newly arrived mother on her English.

  “You could have told me,” I hissed back at her. “You don’t look anything like her!”

  “Thank god.”

  Somehow I now understood why Tammy and Claudia couldn’t stand each other anymore. I liked her mother. She introduced herself as Evgenija, the Russian version of Eugenia, and said her foreign colleagues called her Jenny.

  I liked the firm handshake that accompanied the English words I took for her expression of condolences. I liked her accent, which I would have liked to have myself. I liked the limited level of interest she showed as she looked fleetingly at my face before turning to her daughter. And I liked the way Tammy suddenly changed in her company. The tension melted from her body, she slumped comfortably at the steering wheel, her back curved, her shoulders drooped, and she talked quietly with her mother and the gurgle of their conversation sounded to me like wind chimes or the distant whoosh of the ocean. I relaxed in the backseat and kept dozing off. Now and then I opened an eye and caught Tammy’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “By the day after tomorrow we’ll have gotten through everything,” said Claudia. She wasn’t able to get up to say hello because Ferdi was asleep in her lap and Tammy’s mother had vehemently insisted that the child’s well-being came first. She ran her hand across Ferdi’s sweaty head. The dispassion of this Ukrainian granny surprised me. Of course we were the same way, but I had expected far more emotion from her. I had the feeling that there was a question in the look she gave Tammy after looking at Ferdi: Is he really yours?

  Now Tammy and her mother had disappeared upstairs to requisition another room, and Claudia was still sitting there while my little brother made rasping noises in his sleep. Claudia’s eyes kept closing, too, but she kept jerking awake.

  “She’s nice, isn’t she?” she mumbled as her eyelids fluttered.

  “Mama Evgenija? Absolutely delightful,” I said.

  “The day after tomorrow,” whispered Claudia. “Everything will be over the day after tomorrow.”

  At eight in the morning my phone rang. I sat up, reached out and accidentally knocked it off the nightstand, and then slid to the floor to try to pick it up. It blinked and jumped around, vibrating. I chased after it like a stork after a toad. Maybe I had gone completely nuts, which would mean I was adapting to my environment. But then I caught it and it was still ringing and I pressed it to my ear. I didn’t recognize the number in the display but
I knew who it was.

  I was wrong. It wasn’t Janne, it wasn’t anyone from the cripple troop. It was Lucy.

  I recognized her even before she said her name. I’d deleted her number along with all the others, but the sound of her voice took me back for a second to a time that no longer existed to me. I felt the corners of my mouth forming a smile. But it withered away just as soon as Lucy haltingly offered her condolences. She sounded throaty, as if she had spent hours crying out of a false sense of solidarity.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s very nice of you to think of me.”

  “I’m happy that I finally managed to reach you,” she said. I waited. I was less inclined than ever to discuss my conduct over the past year. She wasn’t stupid and understood that on her own.

  “How are you, Marek?” she asked, her voice clear again, light and clear, and I could tell that one false word or a false tone would cause her to break down in tears again. I sniffed the tipping point of a nervous breakdown. Not that she was the type to fall apart, but she had her limits, and apparently I still knew her well enough to know where they were.

  “How did you find out . . . ” I asked.

  It was simple. She had called our house to try to catch up with me. She had spoken on the answering machine and a very nice man named Dirk had heard the message. He called her back, told her everything, and encouraged her to reach out to me, because in a situation like this I could surely use words of support from a dear old friend.

  “Idiot,” I said.

  She laughed. “No,” she said. “He just doesn’t know you very well yet.”

  “You can drop the ‘yet.’” I said.

  She said nothing and I was happy she didn’t try to engage in banter. She asked about my father, held her breath as I told her about him falling off the mountain and breaking his neck, and I heard her gulp loudly several times as I told her about viewing the open coffin. I was happy to be able to tell someone about it.